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Bright afternoon sun filtered through the branching rainforest canopy, here and there reaching all the way to the humid forest floor. The spate of wet weather that had passed over the forest, blanketing the understorey with fine mist, had run its course. With the return of the sun had come all the sounds of the forest, the cries of distant birds and the buzzing, incessant drone of a myriad insects.
Through the dense undergrowth two nichelings walked, shouldering aside blades of curling grass twice the tallest's height. One was Anameis. Her last few days had been nothing but patrols, and today was no difference. The other was Taelis, the berry-purple nicheling who, alongside Lurro, had intercepted Laana's little group at the borders of Taimeran territory. By Taimeran standards she was a heavy, powerful figure; had Anameis never left the tribe, she would have called her the strongest nicheling she'd ever seen. Though she was no match for the likes of Rara or Kois, she still made for an intimidating creature. Relare's reign had seen an up-welling of nichelings eager to throw off the past. Some were Lurro's type, happy to take control under a guise of Taimeran restraint, but in the case of those like Taelis, Anameis suspected she was simply no longer repressing a desire to fight rather than flee. She had already seen the bigger nicheling snap and tear at a rabbil unfortunate enough to cross their path, and held no doubt she would try to take on an ape if she thought she stood the slightest chance of victory.
It was their first day patrolling together. It was always Anameis' first day patrolling with anyone. Every day, Lurro assigned her a new task and a new partner. He never explained his reasoning, but she could figure it out. Perhaps he wanted to see how well she worked with the individual nichelings under his command, but if any nicheling had been inclined to suspect another's motives, it was Anameis. He mistrusted her. He wanted to make sure she didn't get close enough to anyone to hatch a plan. Her partners had been instructed to keep an eye on her and report back. Any manner of schemes was plausible.
Right now they were heading downhill, after scenting out the Taimeran's far borders - close to the same area, in fact, that Lurro and Taelis had first apprehended Laana's group. The path they followed had been cut into a deep channel by the heavy rains of the last few days, and though drier weather had followed in its wake, the footing was still soft and unsteady. Anameis scrambled as best she could through the red dirt, occasionally breaking her unsteady tripedal gait to glance around, ears and nose twitching. The sun was still high in the sky, but the two nichelings had already found much to report.
She stopped again, rearing up. A silence had fallen over the jungle. Her ears swivelled, seeking the slightest sound...
"What's the hold-up, runt?" Taelis demanded.
"Something's here." Anameis dropped back to her three good legs. "Listen."
Taelis let out a rumbling half-growl. With her two big digger's paws she was not a nicheling built for stealth, and Anameis could never be sure of her gruff ribbing was her idea of humour or a realise of tension at being forced to work with her. Anameis ground her teeth and dealt with it. There were worse things Taelis could call her.
Besides, she listened. A tense moment stretched between them, heartbeat by heartbeat, until a rustle rang softly through the air...
Silent as a shadow, Ki-Relare leapt upon the path before them. "Report."
Much to Anameis' relief, Taelis pushed forward. "Ape tracks by the territory boundaries. Looks like they've been past recently. A day or so."
Relare's ears flattened. "What kind of ape?"
She did this sometimes, the patrol members said. She, or one of her high ranking underlings would trail a patrol, sometimes all day, taking careful note of what they saw and what they missed, and then appear to them, demanding a report on the spot. Taelis knew this as much as anyone, and she faltered at Relare's question. Anameis crept forward. "Looks like the big-eared kinds." She'd not spent her early life on the tribe's outskirts for nothing.
Relare's eyes focused on Anameis now, and she forced herself not to flatten her own ears in response. "This will be noted. What else?"
"There were two plants," Anameis said.
Relare looked at Anameis' paws, stained only with the trail's mud. "And you did not dig them up."
"No, Ki-Relare," Anameis said. This was it. There was no hiding. Surely Relare had seen them too, or had she not shadowed them this time? Rumour and news blurred within the tribe. "They were growing too close together.," she went on, dipping her head in her best feigned respect. "It wasn't safe to get in close, so we thought it best to report back and decide what to do."
None of this was a lie, though Anameis' heart hammered so hard against her chest that surely Relare heard every beat, listening in on every thought. Earlier she and Taelis had found the two plants growing in the shade of a tree, beside sprawling roots that blocked safe access, and both nichelings had searched and searched for a way in. Even if neither had guessed Relare lay in wait, thee decision to back off had not been made lightly.
For one horrible, long moment, Relare said nothing, stood deep in thought. She turned her gaze from the two of them, staring off into the distance as though at something only she could see. Her ears were still flattened, but her posture lent her a forlorn, lost air. "Understood," she said. "There is nothing you can do. Carry on with your duties." With those words she turned to leave, her long plume of a tail brushing the grass as she vanished into the undergrowth from which she appeared.
Anameis and Taelis stood waiting, ears strained, not daring to move until they were sure she would not return. Not a rustle betrayed her movement through the curling grass, yet still they were struck into silence, both left to wonder if they had been fortunate or extremely unlucky.
---
The sun shone at its hottest during this part of the day, slowly baking the humid air and casting blinding rays through the treetops. The chirping, buzzing insect calls melted together into a blur or sound, as though solid enough to bar a travellers' way. The smell of earth and steam overpowered Relare's nose. Yet she stalked her territory, as alert as a rabbil on open ground.
It was better than the sounds of the cave.
The others of her tribe feared Rara, the one who must have torn the plants apart and freed the seer before. She did not blame them. They saw the huge nicheling every day, whenever the guards escorted her out of the cave mouth. They shrank away, giving the war-beast and her escort as wide a berth as possible in the cramped caverns, and watched in a terrified sort of fascination as her claws clicked upon the stone and her tail lashed, gems dull yet filled with defiance.
But Rara... Rara was under control.
A whir of wings, a flicker of motion out of the corner of her eye, and Relare froze where she stood. Creeping slowly forward, she found no more than a russet and black beetle alighting upon a stem of curl-grass. She watched it climb into the sunlight, the harsh light washing out its colours. Up and up it climbed, unaware of Relare's presence. Its world was the stem and the sunbeam, a bare fraction of Relare's forest and all that weighed upon her.
Leaving the beetle to its miniature world, Relare loped down the path, ears perked in vigilance, mulling over her predicaments. Rara had been an example to the Taimerans: a fierce outsider and savage predator now tamed and subdued. She served no more use to Relare. But the seer...
Relare had not ventured that deep into the caverns since the rain-drenched day Laana had arrived. But her guards told stories, and with them the ground grew ever more slippery under Relare's paws.
And then there had been the rogue-born. An excellent tracker and scout, just as Relare predicted, yet there had been her report. -There's an ape in the forest.- The words, passed on from her guards, still taunted her memory. The rogue-born knew more than she let on. She must.
Relare flicked an ear at a passing insect and paused to shake a little mud-dust from her soft forepaws. She had been putting off the inevitable, lost in her own indecision. But her tribe needed a leader, and a leader must never be seen lost.
She would descend into the deep caverns, and she would do it tonight.
---
Laana waited in perfect darkness.
She paced the cavern's confines, there and back, there and back. Her head swayed, unbalanced by her broken horn. The rushing water was the only sound in the world, and soon it was no sound at all, for it was incessant and never-changing. In this black and silent world she waited amongst stolen gems. Any moment now, the guards would return for hers.
They did not return.
Immediate fear gave way, slowly, to persistent dread. Exhaustion set in, yet she could not lie still, knowing what waited. But there was no time here to tell her of her fate, and at last she fell into a twitching sleep, awakening every so often to the sounds of her dreams. They were transient images, filled with words that fled her memories every time she returned to the dark. Between dreams she lay awake, body pressed flat to cold stone, until once again sleep claimed her. Again and again she cycled, from vivid but fleeting dream to silent wakefulness beneath the earth, until she could no longer count the iterations.
Eventually she could sleep no more and, by scent and sound, located the stream running through her prison. She drank deep to quench her thirst and fill her empty stomach, to feel the water's chill on her tongue, for it was the only sensation in the world but the stone at her feet and the silence in her ears.
At last the sound of paws above echoed through the cavern. Laana whirled around, tense, crouched, hackled raised. They stopped, and Laana's ears swivelled in the direction they had come. She waited... and no nicheling descended into the cavern. No voice spoke to her. Touching her nimble paw to her gems, her hackles slowly lowering, she waited. A guard, relieving another of their duty?
"Hello?" The word repeated in echoes, amplified far beyond her nervous whisper.
The guard, if a guard they were, did not reply.
Laana combed through the silky fur of her ruff, rearing up as though she could still study her reflection in the rushing water. "Ki-Relare?" When still there was no reply, she followed the water to the cold, stony falls where she had been thrown, where above she was sure the unseen nicheling waited, and still silence greeted her.
She waited at the falls. Perhaps this was to be her fate, then, and she would not argue that she had earned it. -Great Doeli, if this is to be my price, then let me pay it.-
But nor was it the first time she had been entombed beneath the earth.
She lay her head on her paws, and waited still.
---
Time passed, immeasurable. She slept, she awoke. Sometimes footsteps above heralded another change of the guard, but she was inconsequential. Perhaps there was no sound at all, only that which her thoughts conjured up to stave off the water.
It took days back home to make a Seer of the Sea, days lost, starving, within the sea-cave's depths, until the gift made itself known. But what gift awaited her, so far from the sea? The water flowed on, and brought no answers.
The lights, though, she remembered. When the hunger started to bite, they were not far behind. Flashes of red and violet, bright as curling-grass stems, danced just out of reach. She whipped her head around to chase the glimpses, only for them to flee from her sight. The lights were the start, just like last time.
Sleep and wakefulness continued to be her only measure of time. She slept with her tail curled tight around her body to preserve what warmth she could, imagining it to be another nicheling by her side. She dreamed of birds, high above the clouds, of menacing figures amongst the trees, of meadows filled with standing back stones and gaping holes in the ground that opened up to misty, unfathomable depths. And every time she awoke, she was once more alone. No guard, not even Ki-Relare, came to claim their price.
-Great Doeli. I know this place. Guide me...-
In her dreams, beasts lurked, waiting like thunder heralded by dark clouds over the horizon. She woke herself up with her own words, spoken in her sleep.
"There's an ape in the woods."
But it was absurd, to think that life and light could flourish in the same world as this pit. Absurd, it seemed, that anything but the pit could ever exist.
"There's an ape in the woods."
Her gems tapped against the stone.
"There's a bird in the sky."
Absurd it seemed, that there could ever be such a thing as the sky.
---
There were footsteps now, and not those of the guards. Just above the rushing water, gone as Laana's ears swivelled to pinpoint their source, a whole cavern of phantom nichelings paced around her, all lost, all terrified. As time wore on they began to cry out, for help, for mercy, for the sound of another voice, and then no more but wordless calls.
Eventually, she saw them. Shapes hung in the darkness, echoes of their forms, as the prints left upon the upper cavern's wall of memories echoed the paws that left them. No longer did they make any sound. Instead they faced her down, everywhere she turned, their gems such faint traces of light that only in these sunless depths could they shine.
The souls of all those who had come before her in the lightless places watched, and waited.
---
"It won't be long now."
"I know."
There was no nicheling by her side for her to speak with. Laana hung on to that conviction. Yet he persisted, a voice in the dark, the impression of one curled up with her, sharing his warmth. She spoke and he replied, though his form slipped away whenever she tried to look, leaving only a memory that a nicheling had ever been there, gazing out into the same darkness.
"Doeli..."
"There will be nothing more from her. You have made sure of that."
"I know."
It didn't hurt any more. After a while, the hunger ceased to bite, the fear subsided, even the cries of the ones who came before fell silent. She and her illusionary denmate were all that was left in the world. The abyss waited, and she would not hesitate. How could she, when she had faced this all before?
She laid her head on her forepaws. Beside her, the phantom nicheling kept up his vigil. A pressure, building up within her gems, threatened to burst forth, and Laana lay still and waited. The pressure grew and grew, became three burning suns at her collar, and still she waited.
She lay still, and yet she felt motion, an unseen force tugging her sideways, away from herself, as though gravity changed directions. Surrounded by the lost, watched over by illusions, she let the abyss open up, and herself fall.
---
She would not remember the events within, but that was its nature, as it always had been.
---
When she awoke, a paw rested on her central gem, short claws digging into the flesh surrounding it, pinning her to the ground. Her whiskers stirred in the breath of another nicheling, no illusion, but as real as she herself.
"What are you?" whispered Ki-Relare.
-- Response ended
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